


Same Song, Same Rhythm, Different Melody

by Belphegor



Series: One-Step, Two-Step, Waltz [2]
Category: Original Work, The Mummy Series
Genre: 1910s, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and a little smut, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:27:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25423132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belphegor/pseuds/Belphegor
Summary: The first time it occurs to him, Tommy is up to his neck in books, trying to juggle Middle Kingdom architecture and Roman politics after Julius Caesar’s death. He and Jon are in the library, bent over books, silent for once. And then at some point Tommy looks up from his dictionary, sees Jon with his chin in his hand, almost asleep, and thinks,I love him.Then he blinks, becausewhat?(Set during chapters 2 and 3 ofPas de Deux.)
Relationships: Jonathan Carnahan/Original Male Character
Series: One-Step, Two-Step, Waltz [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780654
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11





	Same Song, Same Rhythm, Different Melody

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChaosandMayhem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaosandMayhem/gifts).



> This is self-indulgent as all hell. After my beta, She of Endless Patience And Kindness, looked over chapter 2 of _Pas de Deux_ (when Jon comes to the startling realisation that he’s not just friends with Tommy, he’s in love as well), she mused “I wonder what’s going through Tommy’s head right now? Perhaps some similar thoughts and fears?” The thought percolated for a few months until last week, when I wrote the first sentence of this little one-shot. So here is the result, in case anyone needs some fluff and soft young idiots in love.

The first time it occurs to him, Tommy is up to his neck in books, trying to juggle Middle Kingdom architecture and Roman politics after Julius Caesar’s death. The end of Michaelmas term is in a week, and they have a number of written tests scheduled and essays to churn out before the Christmas holidays. He and Jon are in the library, bent over books, silent for once. And then at some point Tommy looks up from his dictionary, sees Jon with his chin in his hand, almost asleep, and thinks, _I love him_.

Then he blinks, because _what?_

The thought sneaked into his head, unbidden, but now it’s putting down suitcases and making itself comfortable. It quickly becomes completely impossible to concentrate on the Second Philippic. Tommy mentally sets aside his Latin translation for a moment to take a good look at things.

He’s never been in love before, after all – maybe this is just a random thought brought on by the sheer volume of schoolwork they’ve been juggling these past few days. Stranger things have happened.

Tommy and Jon are friends. Best friends, even. Tommy’s had mates, and friends, but never a friend quite like him, and not just because they recently have taken up to kissing each other and doing lots of fun things friends generally don’t do. Waking up after a late night with Jon’s skinny body wrapped around him, skin to skin, is infinitely better than waking up in the same bed half-hard and confused about the strange pull in his chest. Jon is all angles, Tommy is mostly planes and curves, they probably shouldn’t fit as well as they do. But then, if you start to look at the differences rather than what they have in common, they shouldn’t even be friends in the first place.

They’ve known each other for something like three months. That’s an awfully short time to start thinking about words like that. On the other hand, it _is_ true that their friendship was an easy, natural thing to fall into. Maybe it’s due to the way they met, maybe Jon is a fun person to be friends with, maybe they just get along well – Tommy has no idea. All he knows is the warm feeling that settles in his stomach when he thinks about Jon, the way his heartbeat speeds up ever so slightly as their knees bump under the table, or how badly he wants to lay his head on his shoulder and kiss his neck… and also correct his Latin translation, because really, Jon, _latrōnum_ is genitive plural, not singular.

Tommy elbows Jon, who jumps, and silently points to the word. Jon smothers a big yawn as he corrects his mistake and throws him a grateful look.

The fondness that blooms in his chest like someone blew on embers comes out of nowhere. Tommy goes back to his work with a smile he’s hardly even aware of.

The question of whether it’s affection, infatuation, or actual love will have to wait until they are no longer swamped with work. In the meantime, Tommy is careful not to let his hand lie too close to Jon’s, because that hand is warm and tempting and _right there_ , and curling his fingers around his would be so very easy – and dangerous, with other people watching.

* * *

The second time is another matter.

Michaelmas term just ended, finally, leaving Tommy so exhausted the first day of the Christmas holidays hardly registers.

By the morning after, so many first-years have left that it makes the breakfast table look almost empty. He and Jon spend the day gleefully avoiding libraries and classes. In the evening, since Tommy is looking at a whole week without paid work, he lets Jon buy him _one_ pint at the Oxford Arms and makes it last a long time.

When Jon starts on his second, he squints at Tommy.

“Enjoying the taste, are you?”

“Well, yeah,” says Tommy, trying to sound and look offhand. “I hear this lager has strange properties. Like making people who have hardly kissed anyone before suddenly enjoy gettin’ kissed, and kissing back.”

“Fancy that.”

“En’t that something.”

Jon grins his crooked grin, and it hits Tommy again. Like the morning sun flooding his room with light, like how self-obvious it is that rain is wet – _I love him_. Simple, unequivocal, indisputable.

 _So_ this _is how it feels, huh_.

It’s strange. It doesn’t feel like anything Tommy’s read in books or heard in song lyrics. It doesn’t tear at his insides and it doesn’t make him want to break into song. It just changes the beat of his heart a little, subtly, and warms him up from somewhere at the bottom of his ribcage to his neck and the tips of his fingers. As they link arms to walk out of the pub – surprisingly, Jon only downed the two pints in the whole evening – Tommy suddenly _knows_ , with sharp certainty, that he wouldn’t mind walking out of the pub arm in arm with Jon every night for as long as he lives.

He’s not supposed to, he knows that. There are laws against what he and Jon share, and others still about what Tommy has been wanting them to do for a while.

(Besides, he’s just a few months shy of nineteen. As he can almost hear his uncle Pat say, he still has a few years before he has to worry about things like “till death do us part”.)

But Jon’s hand is warm in the crook of his elbow, and his eyes shine as Tommy can’t help but stare at the falling snow in wonder like he’s ten years old again. If God created everything, including snow, the light blue of Jon’s eyes, and the ball of warmth in Tommy’s stomach right now – affection, desire, and the slight lurking apprehension that people might be able to _tell_ – then why should one of these things be forbidden? Will they really go to hell for being intimate with each other, and enjoying it so much?

And they do enjoy it, as evidenced just a few minutes later by their enthusiastic kissing, caressing, and undressing each other, the way they laugh in each other’s mouth, the happy noises they let themselves make for the first time.

Because they’re alone and safe, and because something – the snow, the laughter, their previous explorations, who knows – is making Tommy feel bolder this evening, he lets his fingers hint at what he wishes they would try for the first time. It’s something he’s only heard about in veiled allusions, crude jokes, or the occasional conviction for life in the papers. Something he’s heard other people call unnatural, painful, or disgusting. But he can’t help it. He _wants_ Jon, like he’s never wanted anyone else; he wants them to connect in ways they haven’t yet, to know each other inside out, to share everything.

Fortunately, as it turns out, so does Jon, and he has planned ahead for the eventuality. It takes some of the contents of a little jar in the bedside table, patience, and some flexibility, but after a while Jon gives a small nod and allows Tommy in.

It is everything and nothing like Tommy had imagined it would be.

The sensations are completely foreign and yet feel like coming home at the same time. Their position is a bit awkward at first, and Tommy is terrified of hurting Jon, but after a while (and some asking, just to be sure) it becomes obvious they’re both enjoying every second, every new feeling, every note in the symphony their bodies are making. They find a better position – one that means they can both sway to the same rhythm, stare into each other’s eyes to get confirmation that this is actually happening, and kiss each other when they want to – and give themselves entirely to the moment… and one another.

Briefly, Tommy remembers hell and the damnation that probably awaits him. The next movement they make drives the thought clean from his mind.

They moan, they whimper, they shout, all in the same shared breath. It feels like they’re climbing a sheer wall, higher and higher, helping each other up and holding each other at the same time; it’s joyous and astounding and like nothing Tommy has ever experienced. When they finally reach the top of that impossibly high cliff, it’s Jon who falls first. Tommy feels him shatter and liquefy in his arms, and it’s all he can do to keep from crying out the one thought left in his head, over and over and over, _I love you I love you I love you I love—_

The world stills, turns brittle, and breaks. So does Tommy, nestled inside Jon, as he howls then sighs right against the burning skin of his neck.

Even after they separate, the need to hold Jon close is too great for Tommy to fight it.

So he doesn’t.

Tommy lays his head on his lover’s chest, so exhausted and content it feels like he’s floating, and smiles.

* * *

The week passes, and Tommy keeps both his secret and that warmth in his stomach, like an echo of everything: sleepy smiles in the intimacy of darkness, hauling themselves out of a cold, muddy river, knees touching under the table, kissing the salt from each other’s sweaty skin – and, recently, losing and finding themselves inside one another. He and Jon spend that week between the town and Jon’s room, in which they take advantage of the fact that they’re alone on the ground floor, or near enough. Besides their bedroom activities, they do exactly what they’ve been doing before – they read, they chat, they joke, they gallivant, they even go see a pantomime or two – only more of it, since without having to go to class or work at the pub they have a lot more time for leisure.

If Tommy wasn’t almost certain by now that what he feels for Jon – affection, warmth, the need to touch, to hold, to be close – spelled love with a capital L, that week alone would confirm everything.

* * *

Tommy has long stopped counting the times the thought popped into his head during the last few days. It’s made him smile, it’s made him shake his head, and it’s made him a little nervous, for two reasons: one, he’s painfully aware how dreadful a liar he is (which puts them in danger if anyone ever figures them out), and two, he suspects things are different for Jon. If there is indeed a scale between “friends” and “lovers” – which Tommy doubts, since Jon is fairly high on both accounts for him – then it appears Jon leans heavily towards the former rather than the latter. He also looks a little tense at times in a way he didn’t used to be.

Ah, well. To be honest Tommy never expected to fall in love with anyone at all in the first place. That his heart should settle on another lad is just his luck – he’s never heard of two blokes living happily ever after. So perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that his feelings seem to be unrequited.

Mostly, what his secret makes him is happy, though, which comes as a surprise. Aren’t people who carry a torch for someone usually sad?

The night Jon is due to leave to spend Christmas with his family, when they’re warm and snug in Jon’s bed and happily about to take matters further, Tommy takes a deep breath and asks if they can switch. He wants to know how Jon feels inside him, to hold him as close as humanly possible.

The first time they made love to each other this way, Tommy was leading, but they set the pace together. That dance was all curiosity and joy before it turned into fireworks. Now, once the music starts in earnest, the rhythm is slow and more tender than anything Tommy has ever danced to. It feels like nothing else exists but their raspy breathing, mingled, the sensations all over and inside his body, and – at some point in the dance – the incredible pleasure that makes him groan, laugh, and cry out all at the same time.

And then, between breaths, Jon gulps and blurts out “I love you” like the words are being punched out of his chest. Just as Tommy vaguely wonders if it’s a fluke, more follows, a deluge of words in rhythm with everything else Jon is saying with his arms, his body, his eyes. He looks awed and relieved and desperate at the same time, eyes very bright, and Tommy clutches his body to his as completion nears and eventually throws him off the edge of the world.

The final wave of bliss shatters him so thoroughly that _everything_ , every single inch of him, body and soul, feels scattered to the wind, laid bare. After a few ragged breaths, Tommy finally lets himself murmur without opening his eyes, “I love you.” Jon gives a strangled sigh, one last push, and falls to pieces in Tommy’s arms with a cry.

When they finally open their eyes, what feels like hours later, still panting, hearts pounding against the skin of each other’s chest like a couple of drums, they don’t talk for a long time.

They don’t need to. Everything about one is laid out for the other to see, clear as day.

* * *

After Jon leaves, Tommy spends the next week between the junior common room and the Turf Tavern in a quiet good mood that even being mostly alone on Christmas Day can’t seem to sink.

He loves and is loved. So _this_ is what all the books and the songs are about. The fact that Jon is his friend, first and foremost, makes it even better.

When Jon comes back from home, almost a week later, something about him is different: he’s less jittery, almost composed, like he’s made peace with whatever was making him nervous. Something gleams in his eyes as he parks himself on a stool at the Turf like he usually does when Tommy is working, even as he smiles his crooked grin that he thinks looks cheeky and roguish, and which Tommy finds endearingly goofy.

They wobble out of the pub after closing time arm in arm, like they’ve been doing almost since they met. When they fall into Jon’s bed wearing only their drawers, almost asleep already, it feels just as natural as the first time Jon invited Tommy in his room, when the only thing on their minds was sleeping off a couple of pints too many.

The only difference – a big one, admittedly – is that Tommy can and does reach across the small space between them and pull Jon to him, lay his forehead against his, and smile when he goes a bit cross-eyed trying to focus on Tommy’s face.

It’s not even that different from all the times they snuggled in Jon’s bed after making each other happy, really. That song is nearly the same. The rhythm of everything – how they talk, how their hands and their bodies find each other, how they fit against each other, the warmth and the smells of beer, cigarette smoke, and a hint of jasmine – hasn’t changed. Only the melody evolved a little. A few notes got added here and there, some parts that were in minor are now in major, and there Tommy’s musical expertise stops. What he does know is that he wants to keep dancing to that song, because now he _knows_ he won’t be dancing alone.

Tommy whispers “Happy New Year, mate”, and knows Jon will hear the words he also means to say. Jon smiles, also mumbles “Happy New Year”, and draws him close.

They’re still holding each other when they drift off to sleep.


End file.
